Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Very slowly, he wiped blood away from his eyes with his free hand. Nothing moved on the ridgeline thirty feet above. No sound came from footsteps crunching through snow toward them.

  Cold bit into him, numbing him until he knew it would be more dangerous to stay than to move. Neither of them were dressed to spend a night in the snow and freezing wind.

  And despite the constantly renewed snow on his forehead, it felt like he’d been hit by a white-hot hammer. When it really thawed out, he would be screaming. Thank God Carly would be there to drive him out.

  “Make me some snowballs,” he murmured to Carly.

  “What?”

  “Snowballs.”

  She wondered if getting shot made someone crazy, but she carefully began scooping up snow and packing it into hard, rather eccentric balls. When she uncovered some small rocks, she included them in the mix.

  Dan waited, thinking about where he had been when he was hit, where he’d fallen, where the shot probably had come from.

  On the ridgeline, where it bends back toward the valley. Probably that group of boulders to the right. Maybe the trees farther on. Eight hundred feet. A thousand at most. Easy enough shot with a nightscope.

  Impossible without one.

  Cold clenched Dan’s body. Without special gear—at the very least a survival blanket—a man had to keep moving to stay alive. That wind was a killer.

  “Here,” Carly whispered. “Some of them have rocks in the center.”

  “Sweet,” he murmured, smiling thinly. “Give them to me first.”

  He felt something cold and hard nudge his left hand. He wasn’t very accurate throwing left-handed, but that didn’t matter. He just wanted to see how jumpy the sniper was.

  In a single motion Dan rose to his knees, fired the snowball in the direction he would have taken if he planned to retreat over the ridge toward the ranch, and dropped back flat in the ravine.

  No shot, no narrow thunder, no motion at all.

  Silence.

  Wind.

  More silence.

  Something hammering in his head and the feel of Carly shivering uncontrollably against him.

  Time to go.

  “Follow me,” Dan said.

  “What if he starts shooting again?”

  Then we’re dead.

  But all he said was, “Let’s go.”

  CASTILLO RIDGE

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  48

  THE SNIPER TRACKED CARLY AND DAN THROUGH THE NIGHTSCOPE, NOTING THAT Dan took advantage of every bit of shadow and rock and tree for cover. The sniper didn’t get a single clean shot at either of them.

  When he was certain they were on their way to the ranch house, he slipped down the back side of the ridge to collect his pay.

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  VERY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  49

  MOONLIGHT GLOWED IN FRAIL SPLENDOR AGAINST THE WALL OF GLASS FRAMING the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The only light in the front of the house came from the Senator’s office, and it was no more than a thin strip of yellow between the bottom of the door and the polished marble floor.

  A shadow slipped down the hallway. Any sound of footsteps was muffled by Persian rugs as the shadow slid to the back of the house. There was a tiny glow beneath the big double doors leading to the suite. Silence, a faint brush of cloth against the wall, a murmur from the heavy hinges on one door giving way to steady pressure.

  The shadow eased inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. A night-light from the bathroom cast a vague illumination that darkened everything not directly touched by light. Winifred lay in the recliner. Every few seconds the oxygen tube took on a faint, shifting glow, sensitive to the movement from the old woman’s shallow breaths. Heavy blankets shrouded her body. While she slept, the oxygen tube had fallen away from her nose.

  Easy. They make it so easy for me.

  Gloved hands shifted the blankets, pulling them higher and then tucking them tightly around the old woman. Gently, relentlessly, blankets flattened down over Winifred’s face.

  Her nostrils flared, seeking oxygen, finding only cloth too dense to breathe through. Her mouth opened, dry as the pillow itself. Her head jerked. Nothing changed except her body’s hunger for oxygen. It raged through her, twisting her. She tried to free her arms, to kick, but it was too late. All she could do was open her eyes and look into the face of her murderer.

  Finally her motions stilled completely.

  Gloved hands pulled blankets back as they had been. Fingers hesitated over the transparent flexible tube connected to the steel oxygen tank. Then the hand passed on, leaving the oxygen tube as it had been found, hissing faintly against Winifred’s neck.

  That’s two he owes me.

  The shadow withdrew, taking with it a woman’s life.

  QUINTRELL RANCH

  VERY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  50

  PETE MOORE WOKE UP WITH A STIFF NECK AND DROOL MARKS ON THE SPREADSHEET he’d been reading when he fell asleep in the Senator’s office. Groaning, he straightened and reached for the mug of coffee that was as cold as the room.

  Now that the old bastard was dead, maybe he could sneak a microwave into the office; he really hated cold coffee. But it was better than no coffee at all. These days Melissa was too busy taking care of Winifred and packing up the house for sale to keep him in hot coffee.

  He took a swig of the bitter brew, shuddered, and took another. The clock struck three. In the silence, the chimes were almost like distant church bells. The Senator had loved that sound.

  Pete stared at the numbers on the spreadsheet he’d used as a pillow. The figures and their meanings were as blurred as his mind. It was time to give up and go to bed.

  He turned off the office light as he went out. In the wide gallery/hallway, moonlight was bright enough to see by. Even if it hadn’t been, he’d walked this way many times before at night while the household slept and Melissa waited in their small apartment watching television. The glassed-in walkway was as cold as the night. He walked quickly.

  He opened the door to the apartment and hurried inside, shutting the door behind him. The flickering bluish light and vague colors of the TV screen lit the room. The laugh track of an old comedy show drowned out the lonely wind and silence of the night.

  Melissa was on the sofa, snoring along with the laugh track. Pete bent down and shook her shoulder lightly.

  “Time to go to bed,” he said.

  She woke up and yawned. “I’d better check on Winifred. Did you hear any more shooting?”

  “No. Probably some fool tripped over his own feet with a loaded rifle.”

  Melissa shook her head. “Poachers shouldn’t drink.”

  Pete grinned. “Maybe he killed himself rather than a cougar. But I’ll go with you and make sure the outer doors are locked, just in case our poacher has a little winter larceny in mind.”

  “Jim Snead would track him down and skin him out like a coyote, and everyone around here with a rifle knows it.”

  Rubbing her eyes, yawning again, Melissa followed Pete back to the main house and to the suite of rooms at the end of the house. At every exterior door, she waited while he checked the lock. Finally he pushed open one of the double doors to the suite and went on through to check the outside entrance at the far end.

  “What a smell,” he said as he locked the outside door. “Has she become incontinent?”

  “I hope not.”

  The night-light gleamed on the steel oxygen cylinder. Melissa walked quietly to the recliner, saw that the oxygen tube was displaced, and reached for it. Winifred’s skin felt cool.

  Too cool.

  And the room was too quiet.

  “Winifred?” Melissa asked in an odd voice.

  Pete walked back quickly. “What is it? Is her fever worse?”

  “I think she’s dead.”

  With a muttered word, he bent over Winifred. No sound of breathing. No pulse in the lean wrist. No tension in the muscles.
r />   And the smell.

  “Call the doctor,” Pete said. “I’ll call the governor.”

  TAOS

  EARLY SATURDAY MORNING

  51

  THE GRAY-BLUE CURTAINS SURROUNDING HOSPITAL BEDS IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM gave an illusion of privacy, but the confusion of the ER surrounded them. Dan and Carly would have been long gone from there, but the sheriff had made it clear that he would be the one to interview them. Then he’d told them it could be at the ER or at the jail, their choice.

  Carly had voted for the ER.

  She was beginning to wonder if it had been the right choice. It had been a busy night. One facial numbness of unknown origin lay on the bed just beyond the left curtain, waiting for test results. In the other adjacent bed lay a slip and fall, which was headed for knee surgery just as soon as the doctor finished with an emergency appendectomy. Another slip and fall, broken wrist, was waiting for a second X-ray to make sure the cast was keeping the bones properly aligned. A screaming child with a high fever and a frantic mother were just beyond the curtains.

  Then there was Dan, the gunshot wound. He had a bandage over a short, nasty-looking furrow at his hairline. He’d been X-rayed and CAT-scanned, cleaned up and disinfected, and given pain pills, which he ignored. The doctor had also told him he was lucky to be alive, which Dan already knew.

  Carly looked at the grim line of his mouth. “Are you sure you don’t want the pain pills? I’m driving whether you take them or not.”

  “The stuff they hand out doesn’t work on me any better than aspirin and a pat on the cheek,” he said. “And yes, you’re driving. If you hadn’t been there to help me on that last part down to the truck and drive us out, I don’t think I’d have made it.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask for something that works?”

  Because I don’t want to be halfwhacked if a sniper draws down on you again.

  But all he said was, “It doesn’t hurt that much.” Which was true. Once the burning and dizziness had worn off, the dull pain was easy to ignore. He’d been hurt a hell of a lot worse. “It’s a scrape.”

  “From a bullet.”

  “Yeah, velocity does add a certain bite. Good thing I have a hard head.”

  She muttered under her breath and gave up trying to get him to take something stronger than aspirin.

  Sheriff Mike Montoya’s voice carried clearly through the background noise of the ER. “I’m looking for the gunshot wound.”

  “Curtain five,” the nurse answered. “Don’t take long. He’s ambulatory and we need the bed.”

  A few seconds later, the curtain whipped aside and a sleepy, irritated sheriff glared at Dan.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Dan said. “I’d have been happy with the night duty officer.”

  “What the hell is going on?” the sheriff demanded.

  “Why don’t you shout?” Carly asked. “That way people won’t have to strain to hear what’s none of their business.”

  “You want privacy,” the sheriff said, “we can go to the jail.”

  “No thanks,” Dan said. “Whatever we say will be all over town anyway, just as soon as your clerk types up your report. Good old Doris has a mouth a lot bigger than her IQ.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Montoya retorted. He flipped open a notebook, took out a pen, and said, “What happened?”

  Carly and Dan had already agreed that Dan would be the one to answer the sheriff’s questions. She was exhausted, had never liked Montoya or his attitude, and was likely to let him know just how much. Then, Dan had assured her, what should have been a brief interview would take hours. Dan pretty much felt the same way about the sheriff, but had gotten over it a long time ago.

  “Carly and I went out to see Winifred at about eight o’clock last night,” Dan said. “Afterward, we decided to spend some time on the ranch outside, so Carly could get the feel of the place.”

  “Or the feel of something,” Montoya said under his breath.

  Dan’s fingers curled around Carly’s hand and squeezed gently, a reminder of their deal.

  She gave the sheriff a smile that was all teeth.

  “We spent some time in the graveyard, looking for gravestones and taking pictures,” Dan said.

  “How much time?”

  Dan shrugged. “Half an hour, forty-five minutes. Long enough to get cold.”

  Montoya waited, pen poised.

  “Carly wanted to climb to the top of the ridge—Castillo Ridge—to see the view from there,” Dan said.

  “In the dark?” The sheriff’s voice was rich with disbelief.

  “The moon was quite bright,” Carly said, giving the man another double row of teeth.

  Montoya grunted. “So you decided to go flounder in the snowdrifts. Then what?”

  “We went up the windswept side of the ridge,” Dan said. “It was an easy walk.”

  “Beautiful,” Carly said softly, then remembered what had happened and shivered. “For a while.”

  Dan thought about mentioning that he’d sensed he was being watched several times. And then he thought about Montoya’s reaction to a touchy-feely thing like sensing.

  “As soon as we got to the top of the ridge,” Dan said evenly, “I was spun around and knocked down the other side by a bullet. I managed to yank Carly with me so she wasn’t skylined while the bastard took another shot at her.”

  “So you’re assuming it wasn’t an accident,” Montoya said, giving Dan a black stare.

  “Yeah,” Dan drawled. “That’s what I’m assuming. What with all the other attacks on Carly, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the agenda was.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Somebody wants Carly out of town,” he said succinctly.

  “Maybe. And maybe somebody was poaching cats or bears for the Chinese trade and bagged a human by mistake.”

  Dan felt Carly tense beneath his hand. He squeezed gently, hoping she’d keep her temper.

  “It’s possible, I suppose,” Dan said, his voice neutral. “You have a lot of poaching up at the Quintrell ranch?”

  “It happens,” Montoya said. “What did you do after you took a header down the ridge?”

  “We lay there and listened to see if the ‘poacher’ was going to finish what he’d started.”

  “What were you going to do, throw snowballs at him?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m licensed to carry. You know because you checked.”

  Montoya grunted. He didn’t know what it was about Dan that had always pissed him off, but it sure did. “Yeah, yeah. Did the guy come after you or not?”

  “No. I waited until it became more dangerous to stay than to go,” Dan said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “We weren’t dressed for a night in the snow.”

  The sheriff looked at Dan’s calm face and unflinching eyes and sighed. Whatever else he could say about la bruja’s son, Dan wasn’t a coward or a fool. It took cojones to lie out in the snow waiting for someone to put another bullet in you.

  “Did he make another try for you?” Montoya asked, curious despite his prejudice.

  “I gave him as little chance as possible, but no, there weren’t any more shots.”

  “Well, that sounds like a poacher to me,” Montoya said. “He made a mistake and ran like hell. What did folks at the ranch say?”

  “We didn’t stop. We drove right to town.”

  That surprised the sheriff. “No matter how you caught that bullet, it must have hurt like a bitch in heat. Why didn’t you stay at the ranch until an EMT or a deputy could help you?”

  “Most of the bad things that have happened to Carly have happened at the ranch,” Dan said.

  Montoya’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. Would you like me to repeat it?”

  The sheriff thought about giving Dan an attitude adjustment, then decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, the ER had gotten so qui
et you could hear yourself breathe, which meant that everyone was eavesdropping.

  “I got it the first time,” Montoya said. “Anything else?”

  Carly thought about where Dan had seen signs that a car had parked at the base of Castillo Ridge and someone had gone hiking up the hill. She waited for him to tell the sheriff.

  “Not that I can think of,” Dan said.

  “If you remember anything else, call.”

  “Will do.”

  Carly watched the sheriff stuff the notebook in his hip pocket and stride through the ER. She leaned very close to Dan.

  “Why didn’t you tell him about the place where that car had parked?” she murmured against his ear.

  He nuzzled against her neck and said softly, “Because I didn’t want some clubfooted deputy messing up the sign before I get back there.” He looked at his watch. “C’mon, if we hurry, we can get some sleep before dawn.”

  “Dawn?”

  “Great time for tracking. Or backtracking.”

  “Dawn.”

  Carly closed her eyes, sighed, and wondered if she’d ever get a whole night’s sleep again.

  CASTILLO RIDGE

  DAWN SATURDAY

  52

  DAN PARKED HIS TRUCK JUST BEYOND THE PLACE WHERE ANOTHER VEHICLE HAD parked last night.

  Carly shook herself awake and reached for the door handle. “I hope we don’t need snowshoes. I haven’t used them since I was a kid.”

  “You don’t forget how. It’s like—”

  “Riding a bike,” she finished. “And all strange white meat tastes like chicken.”

  Dan thought of some of the things he’d eaten. “Don’t you believe it. Some of it tastes like what it is—disgusting. Stay here where it’s warm while I check out the tire tracks.”

  “Disgusting? What was it?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  She thought about it. “No.”